Carbon-Negative Magnesium Refinery
Ultramafic rocks contain silica, magnesium, iron and critical minerals such as nickel, cobalt and manganese. Mafic rocks contain silica, magnesium, iron and alumina. We mine these rocks with a technology called "Hydrometallurgy" that uses acid and base to leach (dissolve) rocks, and then base to precipitate (make liquid into solid) out the minerals we want. This process is mass-balanced, which means it creates virtually no waste and no emissions. It provides the most environmentally friendly mining process.
EDAC's carbon-negative magnesium refinery produces nanoparticles of magnesium hydroxide at 99%+ purity for FREE! How? By selling all of the other co-products we make (silica, iron, battery materials), our refinery retains the ultimate flexibility for selling magnesium hydroxide. While magnesium hydroxide has many uses, this particle is a building block to many other products such as magnesium oxide (flame retardant, construction material), magnesium chloride (magnesium metal precursor) or magnesium sulfate (epson salt).
Why do we say this process is carbon-negative? Most conventional magnesium products require the release of CO2 into the atmosphere from the heating of magnesite. When you substitute a carbon-free product for an product that emits carbon, you make a real difference. Further, magnesium hydroxide is a substitute for lime (calcium oxide) in the pH control market, and lime is another product that requires CO2 emissions to make it.
Magnesium-silicate rocks are a Global Opportunity
At 3% of the earth's crust, ultramafic rocks can provide limitless magnesium and solve the climate crisis many times over
Carbon-Removal with Critical Minerals Extraction
By adding an air contactor to our magnesium refinery, we literally capture CO2 from the air and insert it into our magnesium hydroxide to create magnesium carbonate, an inert sand-like substance. This approach provides permanent capture and sequestration of CO2. The United States has so much ultramafic rock that using EDAC's process, it could sequester 4 trillion tons of CO2.
Lithium Recycling
EDAC's electrosynthesizer can split both lithium and sodium salts. For some battery recyclers, the process flow includes the creation of Lithium Sulfate and Sodium Sulfate waste. EDAC can manage both of these streams to produce the final Lithium Hydroxide used in batteries, and to help recycle the sodium sulfate waste into use streams of sodium hydroxide (base) and sulfuric acid.
Direct Air Capture
The electrosynthesizer cost effectively makes acid and base to capture CO2 from air and release it as a pure CO2 stream in a fully mass-balanced process with no waste or emissions.
Electrosynthesizer Sales for Other Applications
EDAC Lab’s Electrosynthesizer will be available for sale to support a variety of applications, including mining, iron making, industrial waste recycling, wastewater treatment, and more. This solution is fundamentally modular, can be located on-site, and can generate the amount of acid and base needed for your application at about half the cost of chlor-alkali and without any hazardous emissions or waste. It can be modified to generate different acid/base pairs, for example sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid from sodium chloride, and sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid from sodium sulfate. In some applications, brine can be recycled back to the Electrosynthesizer to save costs.
